


Creator's Apathy

by Thuri



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Self-Doubt, maybe more than a little self projection from the author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuri/pseuds/Thuri
Summary: The blank page is staring up at Roman, daring him to fill it. He's no longer sure if he can.





	Creator's Apathy

**Author's Note:**

> So I started to write something for Roman’s birthday, and it turned out angsty? Sorry, sweetie! Didn’t mean to torture you on your big day!

Roman stared at the blank page in front of him, pen poised just above the paper. He had only to touch the tip to the surface, to let ink soak into fiber, gradually stain and color its former emptiness with shape, form, worlds and adventures spun from prior nothingness. He had only to begin and magic would be born.

He threw the pen down, metal clattering against the surface of his desk as he dropped his head into his hands.  _Shit_. When had this become so  _difficult_? When had creation turned from his one true joy, his one ever present and ever reachable escape, to an overwhelming and intimidating  _nightmare_?

Why couldn’t he write? It wasn’t for lack of ideas, he had those straining against the inside of his skull, could sketch out the bare outlines of story after story, world after world. He could place characters into a dozen different situations and scenarios and see exactly how he could get them back out again. He’d even talked through the ideas with the others, had been encouraged by Patton’s excitement, even been able to answer Logan’s concerns over continuity, had everything figured out and ready, had sat down to write and...

Nothing.

It wasn’t even that he didn’t know how to start. No, he could think of dozens of different places to begin, he could imagine the first scene with no issue. But he sat down, he picked up his pen, and he felt...bored.

Yes, that was it. Bored. The idea of expending the energy to actually slog through scene after scene, to pull the descriptions and details out onto paper, to force himself to refine them and set them down, all of it sounded exhausting, insufferable, and...boring.

Talking the ideas out wasn’t boring. Lingering on the details of imagined lives in his head or with the others wasn’t boring. Even defending his plot points and forcing himself to come up with clever explanations wasn’t boring. He loved his creation, his world, his characters.

But the idea of recording anything about them in an actual narrative was.

And he didn’t know  _why_.

When had he lost the spark, the joy of watching the narrative take shape on the page?

Not of rereading it after, not of sharing it, not of having it finished, no, those he all still had in spades.

It was the joy in the act of the creation itself that he had somehow lost.

And what did  _that_ mean? 

Roman looked up, seeing his own pale face reflected in the dark window before him, a creeping, icy chill of fear sliding down his spine and coiling in his stomach. 

Because if Creativity no longer loved creation...then what did that make him?

And what would that mean for  _Thomas_?


End file.
